Rest Hard: Intimacy

When you hear the word Sabbath, you maybe think of a Sunday school lesson where you recall one commandment of the 10 being something about something called sabbath. 

The 4th commandment is “remember the sabbath and keep it holy,” and then we are reminded that God set the rhythm of sabbath at the creation of the world. 

In America, the sabbath is a foreign concept to most people. Some people might consider the day of the week they go to church their “sabbath” and some people may not consider any day of the week a sabbath. They might think that it’s an outdated concept, or only for practicing Jews, or simply an irrelevant part of the Bible. (Side note: no part of the Bible is irrelevant, so you can just take that idea and throw it away.) 

On the World Race, the sabbath is scheduled into our week–in fact, our whole week revolves around it! 

The sabbath is a day to physically rest and spiritually recharge. A day to honor God and drink deeply of His presence. I once heard someone say “to sabbath is to get in the presence of God and stay there.” We do not work to earn a day of rest, we work because we start the week by resting well. It shifts our gaze from the work of our own hands and a mindset of productivity to the Creator and Provider of all things. 

Culturally, in the United States, it feels like resistance to rest. It feels like going against the grain to refuse to spend yourself completely 7 days a week, 365 days a year. When I lived in the States, sabbath felt like something I had to fight for. 

Living in the jungle in Honduras, and now in a house with over a dozen other people in El Salvador, and soon on an island in Nicaragua, sabbath is different in both good and hard ways. 

Sabbath here is something that everyone else is doing, so in that sense it’s easier. 

We all wake up one day and excitedly exclaim “tomorrow’s sabbath!” And then we work hard because we know the next day we get to rest. 

I don’t have to actively decide to stay off social media to focus on the Lord, because internet doesn’t exist out here. 

I don’t have to resist going to Target and running errands “because I have the time,” but instead I get to sit as long as I want with an open Bible because I have the time. 

But at the same time, sabbath is still hard because the Lord speaks to every person as an individual. So when the Lord tells me to stay with Him and continue reading scripture, when I can hear all my friends playing cards together, I get to choose to walk in obedience or not. 

To some people, it is restful to spend the whole day with other people. To me, I need to get alone with God to focus on His face intently and hear His voice most clearly. 

But to put “rules” around the sabbath, in or outside of the United States, is to create a self-centered day of shoulds and should nots, rather than enjoying the provision of God in the presence of God. 

The Bible tells us that “the Sabbath was made for man, not the man for the Sabbath” — meaning the Sabbath was meant to be for humanity to rest, and not to be an extra set of rules burdening the people (which is what Jesus was getting at in his Mark 2 conversation with some Pharisees when He said the above quote).

So whether you’ve never heard of the sabbath or it’s something you practice weekly, let this be an invitation to you to rest again. Know that you are provided for by the Creator of the universe and seek His face, because God loves to spend time with his kids. 

I’m currently in El Salvador with the whole squad for 2 weeks of debrief and training! Stay tuned soon for a recap of ministry and what I learned in my first two months of the World Race in Honduras. 

Please pray for:

– my fundraising! 
– rest for myself and the squad here in El Salvador! 
– unity within our teams and on our squad!